The Darkness Within
by girlinshipwreck
Summary: Vivien fears Alexis whilst fearing for her, terrified the darkness within her daughter will destroy all the 2nd Mass are trying to save. {One-shot, Season 3 & 4, AU}.


**The Darkness Within **

_Hello darkness, my old friend_

_I've come to talk to you again_

_Because a vision softly creeping_

_Left its seeds while I was sleeping..._

"Mama?"

"What is it, Lexie?" Vivien snapped, instantly regretting her loss of temper as the little girl calmly and coldly turned away from her, resuming her search for firewood. After Alexis had removed the Espheni eye worms from Lourdes, Vivien felt like she was walking on a knife-edge, swinging between fear for her daughter and fear of her. But it didn't give her the right to take it out on the child. Whatever Alexis was, weapon or not, she couldn't help it.

"Lexie," Vivien said quietly, making Alexis turn around, "I'm sorry."

Alexis just inclined her head, the gesture jarringly mature.

"What is it that you wanted to ask me?" Vivien tried to smile, stooping down so she was eye-level with Alexis.

"You're frightened of me, aren't you?" Alexis said without accusation or emotion.

Vivien swallowed hard, sensing there was no point in lying. "I am," Vivien said, the words almost being wrenched from her.

Alexis nodded again, accepting Vivien's answer with a serenity that tore at Vivien's heart. Impulsively, she smoothed back a black wave of hair from Alexis's face, studying her daughter's features, almost as though she was learning them off by heart. Alexis was pretty when Vivien wasn't, but she could still see herself in her, both of them sharing the same thick black brows, full lips and determined chin. Alexis also had Vivien's hair as well as Tom's dark eyes, but the Espheni element in her set Alexis apart from both parents, arming her with abilities beyond anything they could imagine.

It was this that frightened Vivien so, not knowing what Alexis was capable of, a six year old child gifted with god-like powers. Vivien didn't know whether they would be used for good or ill, making her terrified Alexis would become a monster, everything the Espheni had ever wanted, Vivien losing her daughter in the process.

"What you did for Lourdes," Vivien said hesitantly as Alexis tilted her head to one side in a swift bird-like motion, "it was... it was good. You did a good thing. She was scared and she was suffering and you stopped it."

And Alexis suddenly smiled, that odd smile that slowly spread itself across her face like a sun rising. It was both beautiful and terrible that smile, making the hairs on the back of Vivien's neck stand up. But she forced herself to smile back, lying to herself she wasn't going to lose Alexis when she already had.

* * *

><p>Alexis tilted her head to one side, the movement swift and bird-like, the palm of her hand pressed against the pulse fading in Lourdes's neck. The crowd could only watch as Lourdes died in front of them, frozen like statues, unable to move, unable to escape. As the veins bulged in Lourdes's temple, the blood trickling like tears from her eyes, Alexis delighted in her death. This was power perfected, divine, the ability to grant life and extinction as she chose.<p>

As Lourdes's eyes became blank, Alexis withdrew her hand, Lourdes falling to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. Alexis closed her own eyes, leaning her head back slightly, letting the power pounding through her veins slow to a steadier beat. But she didn't lift the spell she had the crowd under, something about their powerlessness satisfying the darkness within. As she opened her eyes again, a small smile playing on her lips, her gaze met Vivien's, the venom in her mother's violet eyes making her take an involuntary step back.

Vivien was not as Alexis had remembered her. Their reunion had been tense, an undercurrent of despair and sadness marring it. Vivien had been searching for a little girl, not a woman almost the same age as her. Alexis's own memories of her mother were of a girl, not a woman. But it wasn't that which had broken Vivien's heart and alienated her from Alexis. It had been the change in Alexis, the darkness within her that had made Vivien draw back. And Alexis had seen Vivien as a stranger, making her retreat further into the false world she'd built around herself.

Alexis stared at Vivien, trying and failing against her will to reconcile the woman before her with the mother she had loved. As a little girl, she'd clung to Vivien desperately, holding onto the only home she had known. Even aboard the Espheni ship, with what felt like the fate of a whole empire on her shoulders, she'd held onto Vivien. She had chosen Vivien over Karen, over power, but now she'd chosen power over everything, even Vivien.

But back then, she'd been a child, blinded by love for a mother who'd feared her more than she loved her. Now Alexis was different, now she could see. And she saw, oh how she saw so clearly. She saw straight into Vivien's heart, seeing the broken love she bore Tom, for the others. She saw the fear still, the guilt, the grief, the despair, the anger. She saw how weak her mother really was, and Alexis was repelled by it.

Then a tear rolled down Vivien's cheek, making Alexis falter despite herself. For a terrible moment, she saw Vivien as she had been, a girl with long black hair and ivory skin, with eyes like the sky and stardust in her soul, telling her daughter fairy-tales of a man and his blue box, how she'd wandered the stars with him. Vivien had been so young, so madly and desperately in love with Tom, loving Alexis all the more because she was his daughter, his child. Despite everything, despite being broken, she'd struggled on, never giving up.

Tears filled Alexis's eyes, clearing her vision, shattering the illusion. Vivien was once more the stranger Alexis couldn't stand, unrecognizable, unreachable, with her hair cut in a jagged bob, the side of her face horribly scarred after being struck by a Skitter claw. She was battle-hardened and brutal. She was the enemy of the Espheni. She was her mother.


End file.
